Wednesday, April 17, 2013

Kids raising money for causes

In these days of uncertain funding for basic programs in schools and beyond, fundraising is a fact of life. There are so many worthy causes that need money, and it is heartbreaking to see kids missing out because of a lack of funding. Well, as of today there may be a new solution. What happens when you tie together crowd-sourced funding like Kickstarter and Indiegogo (which uses the power of the web to raise money for start-ups) with great causes and the boundless energy of kids? The answer is Piggybackr. We think that many of our readers may find this to be a useful tool.

Piggybackr is a new website that is launching today. It gives kids a straight forward way to use the power of the Internet to raise money for sports teams, field trips, and projects. We gave you a little preview of it last week with the announcement of the Aeroponics for All campaign (thanks for continuing to spread the word on this one).

The way it works is that the kids who are interested in fundraising create a video and a description of their fundraiser and they post it on Piggybackr. They create different levels of donors and may include gifts for them to show their appreciation. Once their campaign is ready to go, Piggybackr creates a custom web page for them, takes payments via credit card and PayPal and allows them to track their fundraising efforts. In team fundraising situations, it can even help keep track of how individuals are doing with their fundraising responsibilities. The kids quickly learn that the website helps collect money, but they still have to do the work to spread the word about their cause and convince people about their cause. It does NOT find donors for them. The whole process helps to empower the kids and maybe even help them to appreciate the resources that are spent on the causes they believe in.

To me one of the exciting side effects is that when kids use this technology to raise money, they are learning skills that will later help them raise money for a business with Kickstarter or Indiegogo. The setup is very similar. You start with a passion and a need. You create a persuasive video explaining your need and provide your supporters with information they need to contribute your cause. These are skills a 21st century entrepreneur needs in order to be successful. There is an interesting article that talks about how we can help prepare young people for jobs that don't even exist yet by one of the founders of Piggybackr. It's worth a look.

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We believe that a stimulated mind lives in a happy brain. Our family is happy to inspire you by feeding you thoughts and ideas about technology, education, books and other things from the world around us as well as a few projects of our own. Please enjoy them at your leisure.

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About us: We are a family living in California - Parents Monika Schoenhoff & Roger Meike and kids nicknamed Widdakay(16) and Bix(14)